Dan Palken News Today

" " Large galaxy clusters contain both dark and normal matter. The immense gravity of all this material warps the space around the cluster, causing the light from objects located behind the cluster to be distorted and magnified. This phenomenon is called gravitational lensing. NASA/ESA Nearly a century after dark matter was first proposed to explain the motion of galaxy clusters, physicists still have no idea what its made of. Researchers around the world have built dozens of detectors in...

By Jim Shelton February 10, 2021 Share this with FacebookShare this with TwitterShare this with LinkedInShare this with EmailPrint this Former Yale postdoc Danielle Speller, who is now as assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University, documents the process of detector assembly. (Credit: Sid Cahn) The search for dark matter — the invisible glue that binds the cosmos and makes up most of the mass of galaxies — is a bit like looking for a needle in a near-infinite haystack. For one thing, sc...

Nearly a century after dark matter was first proposed to explain the motion of galaxy clusters, physicists still have no idea what it’s made of. Researchers around the world have built dozens of detectors in hopes of discovering dark matter. As a graduate student, I helped design and operate one of these detectors, aptly named HAYSTAC. But despite decades of experimental effort, scientists have yet to identify the dark matter particle. Now, the search for dark matter has received an unlikely ...